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Drop in gold mining helped reduce deforestation rate in 2013
A significant fall in mining activities last year saw the country’s deforestation rate
Guyana’s deforestation rate dropped last year, according to a new report.
dropping, according to interim results of the country’s 4th Annual Assessment of Deforestation and Forest Degradation, under the Monitoring Reporting and Verification System (MRVS).
According to the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment yesterday, the initial 2013 deforestation rate indicates a decrease in the rate of deforestation from 0.079% as the annual rate for 2012, to 0.068% as the reported rate for 2013. Total deforestation was 12,702 hectares for 2013.
“The main reason for this decrease in deforestation rate is on account of a decrease in deforestation from mining activities which dropped to 11,487 hectares from the 2012 total of 13,664 hectares, a decline of 2,177 hectares,” the Ministry said.
The findings are significant as there is a raging debate of the management of the forestry and mining sector.
According to the Ministry, the decrease may be on account of new technology and more responsible and low-impact mining practices.
“A significant fact influencing this decline in deforestation in mining has also been the intensified monitoring activities by the natural resources sector and its agencies in working with operators in the sector.”
As a matter of fact, the Ministry said yesterday, forest sector deforestation continues to be at a very low level of 330 hectares which justifies the assertions that forest harvest has had, and continues to have, a very low impact on deforestation.
The results are being finalised at this stage and will be incorporated into the MRVS Year 4 Report which is expected to be released shortly.
The findings and methods of the assessment will be open to two layers of independent assessment: the first by a team of accuracy assessors who will be working to establish the statistical accuracy, uncertainty levels and precision of the reported results, including the deforestation rate; and the second assessment will take the form of an independent third party verification, conducted by a company contracted by the Government of Norway.
The report is critical to the US$250M agreement that Guyana has with Norway to ensure that the country’s forests are protected.
Last year, it was confirmed that Guyana would lose at least US$20M after deforestation rates went up. The deforestation rate is one of the benchmarks used to make payments…a higher rate will attract penalties.
According to the Ministry yesterday, the rate of deforestation over the past 23 years has remained fairly stable between the range of 0.02% and 0.08%, and stands to compare quite favourably with the global average deforestation rate, computed across 85 developing forested countries as reported by FAO, which is recorded at 0.52%.
This rate also compares very favourably with Guyana’s Reference Level as agreed under the Guyana Norway Bilateral Agreement on Forest and Climate, which is set at 0.275% (computed as the mean between Guyana’s historic rate of 0.03% and the global rate of 0.52%).
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